A Computerworld blog speculates that the open-source Unix distribution may live on, but Oracle won't be supporting it. At this point, "OpenSolaris' only real future is as a fork, which would not be easy to pull off. Still, with enough interest from developers it could be done. OpenSolaris is licensed under the GPLv3 CDDL and various other OSS licenses, so the base code is available."

I really tend to doubt that OpenSolaris will die, just because Oracle now owns it and has decided to basically abandon collaboration with the open effort. People have been talking about the untimely "deaths" of Amiga/AmigaOS, IBM's OS/2, BeOS and most recently, Windows XP. Yet, all of these OSs enjoy a faithful, thriving following. OpenSolaris may stumble, go dormant for awhile; maybe years, but rest assured it will live on in some form or another. Maybe ten years from now we'll all be on here reminiscing about a day when Linux was once this popular little OS people tinkered with until OpenSolaris arose from the ashes and took the world by storm! Just one possibility among many.